Category: Uncategorized
WEEK 2 – TASK 1 TUTORIAL – Group with Jules
TASK 1 TUTORIAL – Group with Jules
Attending the group tutorial was really reassuring for me as it was a positive online tutorial, was really nice to see other people on my course and have discussions in smaller groups, as well as it being useful for me to hear other people’s ideas and the way that they research as they could always teach me something new. It also reminded me that everyone’s brains work individually, and I need to find my own unique way of working, researching and documenting in order to progress my professional development too. For example, one of the girls in my group had a fairly positive idea for an outcome she wanted to present and is working backwards to achieve that goal which works for her, but I know that personally I work better by gaining a lot of research and making small experiments first, and therefore will continue to work more that way.
I was thankful for the tutors to clear up the confusion I had between both tasks and now I am aware that as I research for each task, these can cross over and inform the decisions I make for each outcome. Task 2 is the academic and critical written outcome when task 1 is focusing on my sketchbook and concept development right now. I was also given a lot of points of research from the tutors to progress my work in therefore I feel quite positive about this project.
WEEK 2 – TASK 2 TUTORIAL – Myself, Jules and Hannah
TASK 2 TUTORIAL – Myself, Jules and Hannah
For my actual topic of exploration for task 2, I was unsure on what direction I wanted to go in as I had generated a lot of potential ideas within my mind map in my sketchbook. I was aware that there must be some sort of link between task 1 and task 2 however the key to this module is research and experimentation and therefore even though I had no solid ideas, I had done some research prior to the tutorial which was useful to talk through with the tutors.
I spoke through my sketchbook work, highlighting that my specialism lies with collage and graphic design and that doing my written essay in the form of a magazine tutorial would be useful in progressing my fashion communication skills towards the area that I feel like I’m strongest in and want to push myself further in. The fact that I’m interested in layout and collages would therefore seem like an appropriate way to present my work, however once I’ve refined the concept down, I’ll be able to review the best possible execution of the subject matter.
My advice was to carry on researching the way I do; looking at both online exhibitions as well as primary research and was pointed in the direction to investigate sensory exhibitions, virtual world, electronic music, lighting and time lapses in terms of presentation, Linderism by artist Linder, John Stezaker, cut and paste National Gallery Edinburgh , Schwitters collage artist Tate Britain etc.
The tutors also suggested that I could complete a technical report on the process of collaging, exploring the origins and pioneers of the movement as well as the political sides. This seemed very interesting to me as collage has now developed digitally as well as having thousands of techniques as a tactile, hands on process.
My next steps will be top research all the artists etc that were recommended to me by the tutors, as well as keep the collage idea in mind and learnt that I need to do a lot of research in order to narrow down a more specific and original idea.
WEEK 1
WEEK 1
After watching the prerecorded lectures and taking part in the live Q&A sessions I’m feeling more confident about both task 1 and task 2 of this module: Fashion Communication Research, Investigation and Proposal – Theory and Practice. I’m excited because this seems like the project to find out my individual identity within the realms of fashion communication after doing a lot of guided group work, as this is far more individual and original.
Learning more and graphic design and layouts, especially during the magazine project was a highlight of my second year as I have found the direction I would like to progress into creatively and would like to incorporate further in my task 1 and task 2 for this project to push my visual identity further. Creating visuals for a zine in first year for the illustration project was one of my favorite projects as I really furthered my love for making illustrations especially with collage as my method of creating work has been fairly consistent over the past few years as I build up my visual identity. Studying visual promotion previously was also very interesting to me through learning how to build a brand visually as well as from the business side was such an interesting project in first year to create a sub brand. However, I’m aware the business module would focus more on this therefore it would be wiser to practice more with graphics/illustration.
Lately I’ve been looking towards potentially doing a masters course in marketing; and wanted to push myself with this project in terms of presentation and layout, which is key within marketing. Therefore, this led me to do some initial research on Pinterest where I’m constantly inspired by the designs I find and begin making a board for this project. Pinterest boards are an effective visual research tool for me as I can see hundreds of ideas in one place, it highlights similar visual techniques that are shown in the imagery I save and can help refine what stands out to me to further my research into which is why I’m using it for my starting point.
SKETCHBOOK
After viewing the PowerPoint and talk on student central regarding presentation; it was highlighted to me that, as someone who enjoys using a physical sketchbook as I work more effectively hands on and tactile, the presentation of my physical sketchbook should also be considered. Not necessarily all the time but in terms of presenting information and documenting I feel like I should be using my book to experiment freely and learn to document information in a range of different ways.
WEEK 1 – “Can you submit a short written and illustrative reflection of what you did /or felt over the summer in your blogs and where you see your next steps progressing, if you haven’t already done so. Please bring these together with your research ideas to your group discussions on Tuesday.”
During lockdown I, like many others I am sure, were feeling less than motivated to complete creative tasks or engage with our more creative side in terms of making content. I felt limited and deflated in terms of keeping myself going with a strict routine and therefore produced a limited amount of work and even struggled with my modules due around the beginning of summer.
However, although without making much work, I kept engaged with the art and design world and kept letting things inspire me; I started getting more into watching documentaries about topics which interested me such as “Have a Good Trip: Adventures in Psychedelics” and “The Social Dilemma”, as I know it’s important to involve myself in what’s trending currently and watch things that question and delve into interesting topics. Luckily this has made me value videos even more as a source of gathering information as documentaries cover a range of topics.
Looking through the Lockdown Diaries on Dazed was extremely interesting for me as since the world has completely change and resources have become limited, this has made artists more creative and resourceful in the way they produce and present their work; which could come in handy for when I need to present my work later on as everything is still currently online. It allowed for a community to be brought together in such uncertain times and highlighted the connection that art and design can bring worldwide through a simple hashtag #AloneTogether. What stood out to me was the Lockdown Diaries: New Dehli on Dazed.com. India is one of the most populated areas and went into one of the biggest lockdown which would have been a great contrast to reality and how people had been previously living their lives and therefore a lot of adaptation and adjustment would have taken place.
SOMETHING ABOUT NOTHING OWN WORK
- ANNOTATED IN PDF
INITIAL PICTURES AND VIDEO TRIALS SHOWN ON BLOG AS THIS IS THE ONLY WAY THIS COULD WORK AS MY PHONE IS BROKEN
INITIAL PICTURES
FURTHER TRIALS
IMG_1333IMG_1334IMG_1336IMG_1335
(all have been emailed)
To explore another medium of art exploring the concept of nothingness and absence especially relating to how I felt when we were sitting down in the classroom in silence I decided to come up with a poem that links to the visuals of the videos that I created and tie my experience together on a more personal level.
I’ve briefly experimented with poetry in some of my previous topics and felt like it was a very effective outlet for me to explore senses, emotions and feelings in a way that I’m not usually used to as I don’t do this all the time but I wanted to push myself and create something a bit different for this module as well as utilise something that I can physically do during lockdown with my limited supplies.
The poem tries to take in account emotions, senses, and generally the kind of vibe I was getting while experiencing nothing; I thoroughly enjoyed making this and I want to progress with making poetry in my future topics because they compliment are really well especially if one were to be read over the top of a video which is something I would do if i had more time.
Overall the poem explains how a piece of faults, almost as if I was meditating, the things I was saying in my eyes as well as the fact that I didn’t want it to end because I didn’t feel stressed I felt calm and engaged with my environment.
orange hazes, pixelated thoughts
ticking of the clock, not a single person talked
breathing intensified, focusing hard on the absence
i daze deeper into the void with no suspense
no sense of terror, there’s no harm here
dreaming in the distance with no hint of fear
colours intwine, shapes dissimilar
wasn’t even waiting for the signaller
To explore another medium of art exploring the concept of nothingness and absence especially relating to how I felt when we were sitting down in the classroom in silence I decided to come up with a poem that links to the visuals of the videos that I created and tie my experience together on a more personal level.
I’ve briefly experimented with poetry in some of my previous topics and felt like it was a very effective outlet for me to explore senses, emotions and feelings in a way that I’m not usually used to as I don’t do this all the time but I wanted to push myself and create something a bit different for this module as well as utilise something that I can physically do during lockdown with my limited supplies.
The poem tries to take in account emotions, senses, and generally the kind of vibe I was getting while experiencing nothing; I thoroughly enjoyed making this and I want to progress with making poetry in my future topics because they compliment are really well especially if one were to be read over the top of a video which is something I would do if i had more time.
Overall the poem explains how a piece of faults, almost as if I was meditating, the things I was saying in my eyes as well as the fact that I didn’t want it to end because I didn’t feel stressed I felt calm and engaged with my environment.
orange hazes, pixelated thoughts
ticking of the clock, not a single person talked
breathing intensified, focusing hard on the absence
i daze deeper into the void with no suspense
no sense of terror, there’s no harm here
dreaming in the distance with no hint of fear
colours intwine, shapes dissimilar
wasn’t even waiting for the signaller
To explore another medium of art exploring the concept of nothingness and absence especially relating to how I felt when we were sitting down in the classroom in silence I decided to come up with a poem that links to the visuals of the videos that I created and tie my experience together on a more personal level.
I’ve briefly experimented with poetry in some of my previous topics and felt like it was a very effective outlet for me to explore senses, emotions and feelings in a way that I’m not usually used to as I don’t do this all the time but I wanted to push myself and create something a bit different for this module as well as utilise something that I can physically do during lockdown with my limited supplies.
The poem tries to take in account emotions, senses, and generally the kind of vibe I was getting while experiencing nothing; I thoroughly enjoyed making this and I want to progress with making poetry in my future topics because they compliment are really well especially if one were to be read over the top of a video which is something I would do if i had more time.
Overall the poem explains how a piece of faults, almost as if I was meditating, the things I was saying in my eyes as well as the fact that I didn’t want it to end because I didn’t feel stressed I felt calm and engaged with my environment.
orange hazes, pixelated thoughts
ticking of the clock, not a single person talked
breathing intensified, focusing hard on the absence
i daze deeper into the void with no suspense
no sense of terror, there’s no harm here
dreaming in the distance with no hint of fear
colours intwine, shapes dissimilar
wasn’t even waiting for the signaller
FINAL EVALUATION OF PROJECT
In terms of professional and personal development I feel as I have progressed further as a creative due to the exploration and research I have undertaken in this project as well as the fact that the general working style of this project was fairly out of my comfort zone; as I don’t usually create three-dimensional work. However this gave me the opportunity to learn a variety of new skills that I will take forward into my future practices, placements, future uni projects and graduate jobs.
In terms of research, exploring types of mediums and artists that I’m not usually surrounded by, allowed me to expand my understanding of different styles of art, for example, looking into Melanie Martinez music videos had such an impact on the entire progression of our project due to her very strong concepts of childhood, nostalgia and ageing reflected in her style of video which heavily incorporates props and extravagant set design, which are topics I don’t usually research into for projects however aligned with our work beautifully.
Due to the ever-changing nature of this module in line with the current social affairs of the coronavirus, my working style had to adapt which proved to be quite difficult, as I had to change from working in a close group setting with access to camera equipment, university software, lighting equipment as well as physical props to then changing all of my outcomes to online platforms or altering them digitally for the new revised final outcome that we had remotely. Although struggling at first, I began to utilise my phone when my laptop couldn’t perform effectively by creating a mood boards using photo editing applications and creating my sketchbook within my blog, which opens me up to the possibility of using an online platform in the future for a final outcome which is an essential skill for contemporary art in terms of layout as well as just being able to communicate with a large crowd and creating a interactive design.
Teamwork was an essential factor for this module, as we had to support each other during the beginnings of the lockdown, with the class room teaching becoming unavailable and transforming into online teaching, we adapted our usual meetings from in person to calling on WhatsApp or Microsoft teams as a group. Previously, we had struggled as a group to bring ideas to life, and to create actual outcomes for the first half of the project, however, we still met up often to discuss ideas and we all made several new boards some of which are on my blog that helped us progress and visualise ideas further. I felt the support from everyone in the group equally as we negotiated between us and divided up roles to suit each person; which led me to creating the website as I volunteered in order to gain a new skill. My role was to collate all the work and create a website, someone else as well was the complete the film that they had started as they were confident with editing, another was to compile our work into the PDF, and another was to compile the illustrations into a look book.
Learning new skills is something I did struggle with without the added support of a classroom however, I overcame this by researching tutorials on how to create a website, which was my role for my group post lockdown, which worked in my favour as I now know how to make a website with basic skills using a website maker, which will prove in handy for my future endeavours and reflected in the fact that I have made a website for my online portfolio too.
MAKING A WEBSITE 3
https://a-house-is-a-home.webnode.co.uk
Due to the simplicity of the naviagtion, the overall feel of the website and the way I could edit it easily, I stuck with Webnode to be the website provider of our online space.
These are all screenshots of me editing and navigating the website on my phone which I had to do because my laptop wasn’t working so well and had to take matters into my own hands, After struggling a lot with making a website previously I was very lucky that this website had such an easy navigation to edit on an iphone which I will definitely keep in mind for future practices!
Each page was allowed to have a certain style which really made it so easy to make each page exactly what you want, for example there was an option to make this page a photo reel, easily displaying a large array of photos that they laid out for you as a template, however where did go wrong was that as a shortcut I clicked on making one of the pages into a blog post as I thought it was displayed in the same way however it was created so that there are different blog post on the page and then you click on the blog post and that brings you to the page where I aimed to have them visible straight away, and it took me awhile to understand how to change the page because in the end I had to delete and start again which pushed me back even further in regards to time. However I’ve learnt my lesson and I need to look more thoroughly into the website layout and instructions.
It was really easy to add in images, take out images or add a text and change around the pages with this website maker compare to Wix or Cargo which I really struggled before! I was so happy that I was able to navigate making a website at the end and although I am so happy with how the website looks it’s very easy to find what you’re looking for and it brings all of our work together in a nice sophisticated manner, for me personally I do wish I had more advanced website making skills or a better computer to edit a really good website because I found it so interesting as you could literally code an entire website yourself and make it exactly how you want which I know would be helpful for the future however for the time being I’m happy that I found this website to use.
MAKING A WEBSITE 2
https://a-house-is-a-home.webnode.co.uk
Making a website requires a lot of skill, patience and time, which I have now learnt as I’ve been attempting to make one to complete our final outcome of placing all of our work onto an online platform instead of in real life, to adjust to the current climate of the coronavirus and online outcomes. I volunteered to make the website as I feel like I haven’t done it before this in depth and the skills would be beneficial within my personal professional module as well as generally in real life on placements and working.
We chose a website out of all internet platforms as we feel like this suited our concept most; this is because we were inspired mainly by films and 1940s which would fit on a website as this is the most traditional online platform. We didn’t need anything too modern like Instagram to actually showcase our work, as it brings a different sort of social element to our work but ours fits well on a website as its’ a simple way to collate all work onto a simple platform for viewing with less interaction; the interaction will be in the questionnaire.
When trialing the website, in order to really try and not only make an appropriate looking website, but also to test my skills and enhance my learning, I used a few different website makers to see what suited the style of our concept, as well as my skill level because I knew this could be difficult, as people do pay people a lot of money to make their websites quickly and effectively.
WIX
Wix as a website maker was recommended to me by a friend, plus I’ve seen a few people in class use it before for different projects so I thought it would be appropriate to attempt to use for our website. The navigation was easy and it had a link on th
e side to explore through each page on the website so you’d be able to click on a page and sort out the settings through this bar, like font, size, positioning, colour, headers, pictures, links, words, videos, layouts
etc. However these were the options when I clicked on it, and I didn’t really understand sub pages or the need for duplicate page at this point so I was lost by this as I wanted the website design to be very straightforward. Soon I realised the icons on the far left were where I could insert pictures and videos.
I found wix to be really difficult and the results were looking a little too bare, not put together right and inconstant in terms of design and better suited to someone with slightly more experience of making a website. The actual style of the website looked okay after moving titles around and enlarging fonts or making them smaller, more italic and in fitting with our aesthetics but I honestly could not work out the more technical side of applying pages well and adding imagery that suits the style of the site.
I’ve been having a lot of struggles with software and equipment since corona virus as I would usually use the library for things like these as my laptop is very slow, therefore when using Wix, a lot of it was quite technical and there were a lot of elements to the website which often meant that it always refreshed and lost data or took too long to launch or edit, therefore I found Wix too time consuming for the project and aimed to move on to an easier format.
I moved onto trying Cargo (forgot to screenshot a lot of my process but I will try explain), which is a well known portfolio website recommended to us by the teachers for the other part of the project, however, I came to realise that I only wanted our website to have a very simple navigation, clicking on the pages which will take you to the characters, the look book or the film, which I thought should work very easily in Cargo to lay it out like a portfolio will each outcome as a different page. Looking through all the templates they had, I was shocked at how most of them were quite niche and complicated, but a few were too boring with a lot of white space or had arranged their portfolios so that each image was quite small, as if you had a lot of work for each project, whereas we just wanted a few images per page. Attempting to add images as backgrounds, replacing the template images on the page, clicking on each page and seeing what’s the homepage, amongst many other things, proved to be incredibly and very surprising difficult as I thought portfolio websites should be the most straightforward of them all!
I tried a third website maker called Webnode after searching for an easy and straightforward website maker on a news article from The Guardian. Searching for a simple layout, where I could place a row or column of pages to click on and place a few images with text in each page with an easy navigation, I clicked on one a few pages down and began. My screenshots are not uploading but I had to switch to my phone to edit this website as my laptop wasn’t working again. I chose a simple design where the sides had the pages navigation, you would click on each page and it would take you to a page editing layout where you would click either a blank page, online store type page, blog, photo gallery, about us or contact page so I adjusted each page for the use of it. I changed all the fonts easily and moved them so they were on the top left and in a cursive, italic font in pink, to make the design of our project link to the aesthetic of the website.
MAKING A WEBSITE – IDEAS
I knew Pinterest would be a good source to find aesthetically pleasing and simple website ideas because a lot of people use as a portfolio or lots of people showcase their work there which is easy accessible for me. I was very inexperienced in making websites therefore wanted to look at something very simple however I couldn’t use any of these templates directory on the website makers I would be using because they were completely separate which I forgot about as the ones on Pinterest were more for buying a domain/ progressional businesses or blogs which I wasn’t doing at this point.
These images show a simple yet soft colour palette as I didn’t want anything too dark, too highly contrasted or heavy for our online platform as this didn’t respect our constant themes and colour palette. They also have simple navigation and look pretty straightforward to have an explore, both essential traits for this website.
LOCKDOWN UPDATE 3
Having to work at home for this project has given me many challenges to face, a three dimensional based project which has to be done collaboratively when we are lacking in resources and software and basically having to change our idea is what we have to be on board with. My laptop that I currently use is quite slow, being able to run google documents but crashes often. Being able to use software such as Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign or anything else on Adobe Cloud will be near impossible to run on my laptop due to storage and quality of my computer.
Due to this I will be trialing making mood boards on both my computer but also trialing using editing applications on my phone, which works better than my laptop. I’ll see what is possible on my phone however I am aware it will be more time consuming.
Also limited resources in my university home has also been brought to my attention, I have some watercolours but I don’t have brushes, some soft pastels and oil pastels which I am not the most confident in using.
The beginnings of my sketchbook were made on Google Slides where I was going to print out my slides to use in a physical sketchbook before universities closed all of their libraries. Google Slides would most likely crash a few times while trying to compile a large document used for my sketchbook therefore I will, according to the advice on the emails teachers have sent out to us, be using my blog as my sketchbook for the future.
As a result I have made sure that each of my blog posts are very more in depth, I’ve gone back through my blogs and I will feature research, notes, sketches and drawings, like I would with my sketchbook and have them detail the journey from the beginning which has been quite time consuming but will hopefully show the flow of the project